The United States urged Japan on Tuesday to keep its commitment to move a US military base on Okinawa island but the two vowed not to let the row derail their security alliance in the face of rising Chinese power. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she had asked Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada to adhere to an agreement to relocate the Futenma Air Station, home to about 4,000 US Marines in crowded Ginowan City.
"We look to our Japanese friends and allies to follow through on their commitments, including on Futenma," Clinton told a news briefing after the meeting at which both sides affirmed their commitment to the 50-year-old security pact. "This is an issue that we view as very important," she said. "But we are also working on so many other aspects of the global challenges that we face and we are going to continue to do that."
A senior administration official later said the US side was moderately encouraged by the meeting, although he noted that no new Japanese proposals were put on the table. "We recognise that this is not going to play out over a couple of days but rather a couple of months," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The talks came at the start of Clinton's nine-day visit to the region, part of a drive to boost Washington's engagement with its Pacific partners as China's influence grows. Okada repeated Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's pledge to resolve the Futenma issue by May and said Tokyo remained committed to the broader US-Japan security pact, telling Japanese reporters he wanted to avoid a loss of trust.
But the Futenma issue is a major irritant, with Hatoyama's new Democratic Party (DPJ) government striking a more independent line and stalling on an agreement by a previous administration to move the base to a less crowded part of Okinawa. Hatoyama is under domestic pressure to get US ties back on track, with media polls showing many voters are concerned about his handling of the relationship, ahead of an upper house election many expect in July.
He underlined Japan's reliance on the United States in a speech to Defence Ministry officials in Tokyo on Wednesday. Residents of Okinawa, 1,600 km (1,000 miles) south of Tokyo, are reluctant host to about half the 47,000 US military personnel in Japan. They have long resented what they see as an unfair burden in maintaining the US-Japan security alliance.